


Would You Look At A King, Would You Sit On His Throne

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Light Angst, Pets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:48:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26216665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: When Clara brings a tiny alien kitten aboard the TARDIS, the Doctor protests... but can a small bundle of fluff win him over?
Relationships: Twelfth Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald
Comments: 20
Kudos: 58





	Would You Look At A King, Would You Sit On His Throne

“Please,” Clara said plaintively for the hundredth time that hour, trailing on the Doctor’s heels as he ambled around the markets of Alfara Matraxia 9 with his hands shoved deep in his pockets and a scowl etched deeply on his face. He’d had the same expression ever since he’d had to bodily drag her away from the stall that still held her attention, even now; even after he’d tried buying her coffee and ice cream in unusual flavours to distract her, and had rambled on about the weather for twenty minutes, complete with sweeping arm gestures that had meant she’d almost ended up wearing her ice cream rather than eating it. Instead, there was a tiny galaxy of pink spots down her white t-shirt; a casualty of her attempted war of attrition on him to convince him to change his mind. Thus far, it had mainly consisted of carefully measured reasoning; sensing that this may continue to be ineffectual, Clara wondered whether it might be worth switching to whining. It was slightly beneath her, but she wasn’t opposed to underhand tactics to get what she wanted. “Come on, please.”

“No,” the Doctor snapped yet again, approaching a nearby stall and holding up what looked, to Clara, like an alien succulent, if succulents were electric blue and trembled in a vaguely sentient manner. “Wouldn’t you rather have this? Look at it; it’s much less high maintenance, much less scratchy, and much less bitey. Plus I won’t stand on it. Unless you put it on a low shelf, in which case I absolve myself of all responsibility. It’s not my fault you’re so small that your low shelves are what normal people call ‘the floor.’”

“Oh, blows about my height,” Clara narrowed her eyes and glared at him, her plan to turn next to whining instead being overridden; cold fury it was. “Is that meant to distract me from the issue at hand?”

“Ideally, yes. Is it working?”

“You have met me, right?” she asked, folding her arms. “You do know that I’m annoyingly and relentlessly persistent when I want something?”

“Sadly, our years of time spent together have taught me that yes, you are.”

“So, why can’t I have a kitten?”

“Do you want that list of reasons alphabetically or chronologically?” the Doctor raised his eyebrows at her, and the irritated stallholder snatched back his succulent, making little shooing motions, apparently keen that this tiff should avoid taking place anywhere near his business. “Let’s see, one: they’ve got six legs.”

“That seems extremely prejudicial,” Clara said with magnanimity. “If _you_ turned out to have six legs, I wouldn’t abandon you.”

“Good to know,” the Doctor shot back drily. “But I think even your idiot human neighbours might notice a cat with six legs and think it rather strange.”

“I wasn’t planning on it living at my flat.”

That wrongfooted the Doctor entirely, and he blinked at her in confusion before asking: “But… what… so where…”

“Don’t look so surprised; I don’t exactly live there anymore, do I?” Clara rolled her eyes, thinking of the mostly-empty flat that no longer held any sense of ‘home’ to her. “It would be stupid to leave it in the flat; I thought it could come with us in the TARDIS.”

“The TARDIS is a complex craft, Clara. It’s a ship that travels through space and time, not a petting zoo.”

“Why not both?” Clara folded her arms, arching an eyebrow. “Unless the cat is going to develop even more legs through exposure to the vortex, I really don’t see what the problem is... and even then I don’t see what the problem would be; more paws to play with! More little feet to knead my lap with… more… sorry, I’m digressing. Come on, the TARDIS is infinite. There’s plenty of space for it to wander and play-”

“And bite through important cables and couplings, yes,” the Doctor interjected with a bemused expression. Clara had known this would be a sore spot; he’d always been unreasonably protective of his ship. “And then who’s going to be devastated that it’s been fried? You are.”

“The stallholder said that they’re actually very-”

“Please,” the Doctor snorted in derision. “They’ll say anything to get you to buy one. Those things are no smarter than your average Earth cat.”

“Which is still quite smart,” Clara noted. “My friend had a cat that could open the cupboard and help itself to food.”

“Oh, I really look forward to the cat opening ports and helping itself to the inside of my ship,” the Doctor narrowed his eyes at her warningly. “It’ll get hurt. It’ll end badly. It’ll bite through something it shouldn’t, and then the TARDIS will break, and worse still, you’ll be sad because your beloved, silly moggy will be no more. I have a time machine, Clara, but that doesn’t mean I can bring it back from the dead. And contrary to popular opinion, Schrödinger’s cat is not a real thing.”

“What if I train it? And keep it in my room until it’s learnt how to behave itself?”

“Well…” he visibly faltered, disconcerted by her amenability. “That’s on you, not me. But it doesn’t seem very fair. Why do you even _want_ a damned cat so badly?”

“Because they’re cute and I always wanted one when I was a kid, but Mum was allergic,” Clara shrugged. “And then the Maitlands were dog people, and my landlord wouldn’t let me have one… come on, we have an infinite time machine. I promise I’ll feed it and brush it and empty its litter tray and take really, really good care of it. Please.”

“You sound like a small human. ‘Here is my list of all the reasons I should have a pet,’ by Clara Oswald, age five.”

“Well, sometimes speaking to you like you’re an idiot is beneficial.”

“Oh, that’s charming, that is,” the Doctor glared down at her. “What, so _that’s_ going to win me over?”

“It might.”

“Well, it hasn’t. If anything, quite the opposite.”

“Oh, sod you,” Clara said furiously, turning and storming off into the market before the Doctor could stop her. She knew exactly where she was going and which kitten she wanted, and the currency cube the Doctor had given her before they’d stepped out of the TARDIS weighed heavily in her pocket, banging against her hip with each step. As she approached the stall she’d been so entranced by earlier, she felt a glow of relief and pleasure as she saw the little ginger and white kitten was still there, stumbling around its basket haphazardly with its brothers and sisters. As she drew nearer, it batted at a brightly coloured ball and then tumbled over, rolling onto its back with curiosity and letting out a tiny _mew._

“You again?” the stallholder asked, shaking his head. “I told you, if you’re not going to buy one – and your companion seemed very certain that you weren’t – then get lost. It’s not fair to pick them up and-”

“I’ll take the little ginger and white one,” Clara said breathlessly, holding out her currency cube like a peace offering. “Please.”

The stallholder looked from it to her and then said hesitantly: “And your friend?”

“It’s not going to be his pet; it’s going to be mine. And if he doesn’t like it, tough.”

“Well…” the stallholder dithered, then took the proffered cube with a small, secretive smile. “Very well. Pick him up, then. He liked you.”

Clara beamed and reached for the kitten, scooping it – _him_ – into her arms and pressing a kiss to the top of his head. Other than the extra pair of legs, he looked entirely like a normal kitten, save for the tiny antenna that protruded from in front of its ears, each an inch or so long and twitching slightly as the kitten looked up at her and began to purr happily. The stallholder swiped her currency cube and then handed it back, appraising them both with a smile.

“Have you got a name picked out?” he asked, and Clara stroked the top of the kitten’s head with her fingertip, smiling as the purring increased in volume.

“Aurelius,” she said decisively. “After the… after a great leader on my planet.”

“A fine name,” the stallholder said with a smile, then his eyes alighted on someone behind Clara. “Ah…”

Clara turned to find the Doctor stood six feet away, scowling at them both with considerable malice.

“I thought I said…”

“Yes, well,” Clara held the kitten all the more protectively to her chest, as though daring him to challenge her. “Too late.”

* * *

The kitten quickly became an established part of Clara’s life. Aurelius would only sleep in her arms, so each night she would retire to bed with him curled up on her chest, and each morning she would be awoken by a furry headbutt to the chin, demanding her attention and food and love after what he deemed an appropriate period of rest – which was often not long at all. She’d trialled making him sleep in his basket beside her bookshelf, but he’d cried until she’d got into bed and then bounded up onto the covers anyway, and she’d given up after two nights of feeling like the worst human in the universe for trying to restrict him to his own bed. Instead, they cuddled, and she had to admit that there were worse ways to sleep than with a fuzzy ginger and white weight in her arms.

When she wasn’t cuddling Aurelius, he had a tendency to prowl around her room, ascending the lofty heights of her bookcase and peering down at her before deciding that he preferred this or that vantage point and leaping across the room with dexterity, perching atop her wardrobe or her dresser and looking around at his kingdom. He seemed to especially enjoy sitting on the top shelf of her bookcase, where after several near-misses with the photos and ornaments that usually adorned the space, she’d cleared a kitten-sized gap so that he could sit and stare at her in relative safety.

When he was fully trained – or at least as fully trained as one could expect a cat to be – the Doctor begrudgingly permitted him to enter the console room or the study or the library, but usually only in Clara’s arms, or only in their supervisory presence. Aurelius was unsure about the strange tall man who was so disapproving and cold towards him, and Clara couldn’t blame him; equally, the Doctor had made it entirely clear that he was not a fan of the ginger and white kitten; he seemed entirely impervious to Aurelius’s green-eyed charm and cuteness.

“There is cat hair,” the Doctor protested one evening, holding out his jacket in disgust and starting to thwack it with one hand, attempting to dislodge the offending fur. Aurelius took offence to the sudden noise and streaked from Clara’s lap up to her shoulder, where he dug all of his claws into her and hissed at the noisy Scotsman, making his dislike as evident as possible. Clara bit down on the yelp that threatened to spill forth from her lips, and instead she raised a hand and stroked the frightened kitten soothingly. “All over my coat.”

“Sorry, I think Aurelius was napping on it. It’s soft, you know? He likes it.”

“Well, can you make him stop leaving his fur everywhere?”

“Sorry, no can do,” Clara shrugged, baffled as to how he seemed to think that this was something she could feasibly control. Removing Aurelius from her shoulder with gritted teeth, she set him down and he stalked across the room with indignation, eyeing the Doctor with contempt. “That’s just what happens when you have a cat. Get used to it.”

“I don’t want to get used to it. I didn’t even want him in the first place.”

Aurelius lay down on a footstool across the study from them, beginning to bat a toy lazily across the brightly-patterned fabric and adopting an increasingly contorted pose as he did so, rolling over and over and finally ending up on his back, blinking at them both from upside-down, his six legs curled comically up above him.

“That’s not very nice,” Clara said, stung on the cat’s behalf. “He can hear you.”

“Oh, for god sake, he can’t…” the Doctor rolled his eyes. “He can’t understand me. And even if he could, it wouldn’t matter. He thinks _you’re_ wonderful, but he can’t bloody stand me.”

“You…”

“Speak Cat, yes. Not that you’ve ever bothered asking. He doesn’t like the mouse toy you think is the cutest thing ever, he hates that turkey flavoured cat food you keep giving him, and he thinks you’re the best thing since catnip. He thinks _I’m_ bloody horrible.”

“Well, stop acting like it then,” Clara rolled her eyes. “Stop being so miserable; he’s just a baby and he’s _cute_ , why can’t you appreciate that?”

“Because…” the Doctor looked on the verge of saying something, then bit down on his lip and stalked out of the room. From his upside-down state, Aurelius let out a plaintive little meow, and Clara sighed.

“I know,” she said with exasperation. “What an arsehole, eh?”

* * *

An uneasy truce was eventually reached. The Doctor pretended, as far as possible, that Aurelius did not exist, other than to sometimes surreptitiously and warily scratch his head or tickle him under the chin when he happened to amble near the Time Lord. This arrangement suited Clara, who had long ago grown weary of the constant bickering over the cat’s presence, and she pretended not to notice the thawing of relations between the two men in her life; the way the Time Lord occasionally crooned to the cat in Gallifreyan when he thought she couldn’t hear, or the way that Aurelius was growing increasingly less apprehensive of the Doctor.

Aurelius was no longer strictly a kitten, but his playfulness had not abated, and he was currently stalking around the console room, chasing a flashing light that Clara strongly suspected the TARDIS was generating specifically for the cat’s amusement. As he pounced on it for the tenth time and the light zoomed away from beneath his paws, the Doctor laughed, immediately looking guilty as he realised he had betrayed his interest in the cat, and Clara turned on the spot, crying out in triumph.

“Aha! What was that?!” Clara asked, raising both her eyebrows with incredulity as Aurelius stood halfway between the two of them, visibly unsure which of them to venture to for affection. “Were you…”

“Yes, well,” the Doctor mumbled, looking down at the console, and Aurelius padded over to Clara on silent feet, mewing at her for attention. “He’s… urm. Rather sweet, I suppose.”

“Music to my ears,” Clara crowed, unable to conceal her glee. “I knew he’d win you over eventually!” She scooped Aurelius into her arms and carried him over to the Time Lord, pressing a kiss to his fuzzy little head and adopting the cutesy voice she reserved for the cat. “Look! The nasty mean Doctor says you’re quite sweet, baby!”

“Yes, urm,” the Doctor stroked Aurelius self-consciously, rolling his eyes at her saccharine tone. “Very nice. He’s not bad, I suppose.”

* * *

As the Doctor set his guitar down in the console room and shrugged off his sand- and sweat-stained jacket, the sounds of a dematerialising TARDIS still ringing in his ears, there was a small, confused meow from the upper level of the console room. Looking up with a frown, he found a small, six-legged ginger and white feline stood there, staring at him with something akin to… what? Expectation? Confusion?

He groped around in his recently-scoured memory for some sort of clue as to who or what the cat could be, but came up relatively blank. Judging by the proximity to the gaping hole that had once been his memories of Clara, this was her cat. He had a name like a Roman emperor, a name he…

“Aurelius,” the Doctor said softly, and the cat meowed again, padding down the steps to him and beginning to twist around his ankles in search of attention. Something about the physical contact was oddly painful, and the Doctor put his hand to his face and began to weep quietly, crouching down and scooping the cat up with his free arm. “I’m sorry, pal. But she’s… she’s not…”

The cat meowed again, then began to let out an awful, wailing keen.

“I know,” the Doctor said sadly, feeling both of his hearts break as he cradled the cat close and Aurelius magnanimously tried to ignore the tears splashing onto his head. “I know, me too.”


End file.
